On Monday in general relativity we showed how the Schwarzschild solution to Einstein's equation gives gravitational potential, centrifugal potential, and a third term which goes as r[sup]3[/sup] that explains the precession of Mercury's perihelion. It was quite interesting.

I've never been so impressed by black holes. Sure they're incredibly massive, so massive that their gravity is so great that even light cannot escape them. That's pretty damn dope actually. But I'm fascinated by this:

There are five of these in heliocentric orbit. Five man-made planets in an orbit similar to our Earth's. Artifacts from the first (and potentially the only) interplanetary voyages ever undertaken by humans. And they're probably going to still be there billions of years after we will. Also they say USA on them, that's pretty cool. We as a nation used to be the shit.

Space is amazing, here's a work in progress of Neil DeGrasse, or as I call him, Carl Sagan: Redux.

Also what do you guys think is the most fascinating phyiscal thing in space out there? Black holes would do it for me, they blow my mind.

What I like about black holes is that they are 3-dimensional holes, not like a 2d one. So it's really hard to understand how that would look like in the middle of a room.
My favorite thing about space are the great clusters of galaxies, it's just so amazing that each on in the Virgo super cluster is an entire galaxy each with around 500 billion stars.

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Also I'm buying a table top telescope, Orion SkyScanner 100mm TableTop Reflector. It's cheap and it's pretty good quality if you want to look at planets and messier objects. And I really like that I can take it anywhere.
any thoughts on a better one at the same price?

I just found out that I will be able to do my masters within the Aerospace Engineering field even though I'm studying Computer Science and Engineering. It's still ~2 years until the day I make my choice, but knowing it right now is making me feel so damn happy.

I've never been so impressed by black holes. Sure they're incredibly massive, so massive that their gravity is so great that even light cannot escape them. That's pretty damn dope actually. But I'm fascinated by this:

There are five of these in heliocentric orbit. Five man-made planets in an orbit similar to our Earth's. Artifacts from the first (and potentially the only) interplanetary voyages ever undertaken by humans. And they're probably going to still be there billions of years after we will. Also they say USA on them, that's pretty cool. We as a nation used to be the shit.

This.
And also the fact that there's so much crazy shit in space.
A star that has a surface rotational velocity of 1/7 the speed of light?
Giant clouds of antimatter?
Stars that have a surface temperature that you could survive at?

Hell, every fictional planet ever imagined probably exists in some fashion out there.

I've never been so impressed by black holes. Sure they're incredibly massive, so massive that their gravity is so great that even light cannot escape them. That's pretty damn dope actually. But I'm fascinated by this:

image

There are five of these in heliocentric orbit. Five man-made planets in an orbit similar to our Earth's. Artifacts from the first (and potentially the only) interplanetary voyages ever undertaken by humans. And they're probably going to still be there billions of years after we will. Also they say USA on them, that's pretty cool. We as a nation used to be the shit.

Not so fast. Progress on the SLS!

NASA has successfully tested the solid rocket booster avionics for the first two test flights of the Space Launch System, America's next heavy-lift launch vehicle. This avionics system includes electrical components for the SLS' solid rocket boosters, which provide propulsion to augment the core stage main engines of the rocket. The first qualification test of the five-segment SLS booster is slated for spring 2013.

The test dubbed Flight Control Test 1, FCT-1, included heritage thrust vector control (TVC) actuators -- electro-hydraulic mechanisms previously used on the space shuttle that direct the booster propulsion system -- with a new SLS booster avionics subsystem. ATK of Brigham City, Utah, the SLS booster prime contractor for the first two test flights, conducted the test at its Promontory, Utah, test facility.

The test successfully demonstrated the new avionics subsystem's interface and control of the heritage shuttle Thrust Vector Control system and performed an SLS launch simulation. In addition to the new avionics subsystem, the test included new electronic ground support equipment which monitored and coordinated activities between the test facilities, avionics subsystem and TVC system. The test is one in a series of tests to reduce risk and demonstrate the avionics subsystem design early in the development life cycle.

"We were pleased to see how the avionics system functioned outside the lab," said Todd May, Space Launch System program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "This test provides an insightful first look at how the booster thrust vector control system will operate and interface with flight hardware."

Don't get me wrong, I love and welcome and look forward to any further attempts with great excitement. I'm just saying that there is the possibility that those five objects will remain in a class of their own. Societies track record so far has been each one collapsed before it got to a point comparable to where we are now.

Don't get me wrong, I love and welcome and look forward to any further attempts with great excitement. I'm just saying that there is the possibility that those five objects will remain in a class of their own. Societies track record so far has been each one collapsed before it got to a point comparable to where we are now.

I think China would be down for a space race. If after the election, whoever's in office makes a great speech and we're officially off to other worlds again, and with meaningful pace, I think China would at least try and get in on that.

The thing about SLS and all the other is that it's all so long-term. You can read about all this in Dr. Neil Tyson's book 'Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier', but basically, what made the Apollo program what it was is the fact that it was immediate. It was we're going to the moon, and with a deadline that was only a few years out from the sitting president's potential term. That's crucial because what it means is that it's not like the Bush or Obama space plan where it's an unconfirmed plan with an unallocated budget to be managed by a future administration whose goals and concerns will most assuredly be very different.

So after this debacle of an election, whoever gets it needs to say we're going back to the moon by the end of the decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, etc, but this time with permanence, and in preparation for manned missions to other worlds beyond our own. The gist I get from the book is that Dr. Tyson postulates that sending humans to worlds beyond our own, while seemingly impractical, directly benefits society in many ways, far more than robotic exploration. It elevates the consciousness of the people and motivates them to dream and think positively about the future because their awareness of the adventures and voyages of other people opens them up to new ideas. Just like in the Age of Discovery, when men were sailing ships to distant and foreign lands, it was an enlightened period. It also happens to supercharge an economy. This change in society as a whole and the space program itself then begins to change technology in unexpected and catastrophic ways. Every electronic device in existence today owes its existence to the Apollo program's effort to miniaturize computing to save weight.

My favorite part about black holes is that if you find one big enough, you can actually survive the fall through the event horizon.

Hypothetically entering an event horizon would be amazing. Would like mr. Hawking theorized time stand completely still? Would we perhaps end up somewhere completely different in time and space entirely? It'd be awesome.

Either way here's a photograph I took of the moon last June, after a total lunar eclipse. It turned a nice redish color.
400mm, but on a full frame camera.

I just found out that I will be able to do my masters within the Aerospace Engineering field even though I'm studying Computer Science and Engineering. It's still ~2 years until the day I make my choice, but knowing it right now is making me feel so damn happy.

You know, whenever I see the planets in CGI images or painted pictures I'm always like, "That's so amazing they look really cool", but when I see pictures of how they actually look like in space, these for example, they just look so incredibly surreal and awesome.

But even if it wasn't, here's the clues. It's clearly a barycenter. It's also spatially close to the Earth Moon system, as evidenced by the clearly early photography, related to the fact that interplanetary missions hadn't flown very far at that point.

And I can think of only one barycenter in the general area of the Earth Moon system.